The present invention relates to an image-forming material and its preparation method, and more specifically to an image-forming material which exhibits high sensitivity and high resolution and is excellent in abrasion resistance of an image, and its preparation method.
Conventionally, recording methods have been known in which radiation energy such as laser radiation is converged and irradiated onto a recording material, and a part of the material is fuse deformed, scattered, burnt or vaporize removed. These methods exhibit advantages in that they are dry processes requiring no solution containing chemicals and high contrast is obtained because only the part subjected to exposure of radiation is fuse deformed, scattered and/or vaporize removed, and have been applied to photoresist materials, optical recording materials such as optical disk, etc., image-forming materials in which they themselves are employed to prepare visible images and the like.
For example, Japanese Patent Publication Open to Public Inspection Nos. 59-5447, 59-105638, 62-115153, etc. describe a method and its materials in which a binder resin is photo-dissociated by a pattern exposure to form a resist pattern; Japanese Patent Publication Open to Public Inspection Nos. 55-132536, 57-27788, 57-103137, etc. describe information recording in which an inorganic compound thin layer prepared by an evaporation method is exposed and is fuse deformed; further, Japanese Patent Publication Open to Public Inspection Nos. 64-56591, 1-99887, 6-40163, etc. describe materials employed for recording information by removing a colored binder using light-heat conversion, and U.S. Pat. No. 4,245,003 describes an image-forming material having an image-forming layer comprising graphite or carbon black and a peeling material.
When images are formed using the above-mentioned methods, image defects are sometimes caused on the surface of images due to the fact that abrasion marks are caused by friction between image-forming materials themselves, friction during handling and the like. In order to improve the abrasion resistance of images, Japanese Patent Publication Open to Public Inspection No. 60-255491 describes a technology in which an image-protecting layer is arranged on an image-recording layer. As the thickness of the image-protecting layer increases, the abrasion resistance of images is improved. However, on the other hand, disadvantages are caused in that energy necessary for image recording increases and further, resolution is degraded.